Practicing somaesthetics
Wonjun Lee, Youn-kyung Lim, Richard Marc Shusterman · 2014
Somaesthetics has been adapted as a theoretical foundation for explaining the aesthetic experience of interaction. However, the practice of somaesthetics remains relatively unexplored in HCI, and it has potential to improve the ideation process of interactive product design by improving designers and developers' sensibility of haptic, dynamic, and invisible qualities of movements. We introduce somaesthetic reflection, a somatic introspection method in pragmatic somaesthetics, and explore its impact on the ideation through a practical workshop. This study revealed that somaesthetic reflection helps the participants experience and recognize unconscious movements and coordination of movements, which further contributes to discovery of design issues in the ideation, and more effective experience prototyping of interaction with moving products. The characteristics of the design approaches found in this study are discussed.